Tallboys Save the Day after Beer Truck Catches Fire

Capt. Craig Moreau said he was driving on State Highway 71 from Austin, Texas, on Monday night when he witnessed smoke funneling out of a truck’s brakes. He and his wife pulled over to help the driver, and Moreau reached for the closest extinguisher on tap: beer.

The 18-wheeler, it turned out, was hauling cans of Coors Banquet.

The "rear brakes had locked up and were flaming pretty good," Moreau later wrote on Facebook, where he posted a picture of the beer rescue. "We pulled over to help, and got to him as he was starting to spray his tiny extinguisher from the outside of the tire."

Moreau, who was off duty, said he grabbed the extinguisher, crawled under the truck and tried to knock down the flames. But that wasn’t enough.

He asked the driver what he was carrying. His response: "Beer! It’s all beer!"

Just then, the tire exploded, Moreau said. Acting fast, he ordered the driver to open the truck and toss him some tallboys.

"I shook them up, and popped a top one at a time until the fire was out and the brakes were cool," Moreau wrote. "Thankfully they were tallboys. I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of it all, he was so shaken up that the humor escaped him."

Beer, because it contains mostly water, works well in a pinch.

"I have no doubt if the beer hadn't been there, the whole trailer would have burned up," Moreau told the Houston Chronicle. "A few more minutes down the road and it may not have worked."

Houston Fire Chief Terry Garrison said he has no problem fighting blazes with brews — if that's all that's available.

"I support the extinguishment of fire, no matter what the cost," Garrison said in a statement.